Kos, (Greek) city-state of

Dorian colonists from Epidaurus (Peloponnesus), have resettled Cos, inhabited from prehistory.

Knidos or Cnidus, a city of high antiquity and as a Hellenic city probably of Lacedaemonian colonization, is founded on the southern shore of the Gulf of Kos in the southwest corner of present Turkey, possibly as early as 900.

Along with Halicarnassus (present day Bodrum, Turkey) and Kos, and the Rhodian cities of Lindos, Kameiros and Ialysos, it forms the Dorian Hexapolis, which holds its confederate assemblies on the Triopian headland, and there celebrates games in honor of Apollo, Poseidon and the nymphs.

Kos has become a Dorian colony by the beginning of the tenth century BCE, with a large contingent of settlers from Epidaurus, who had taken with them their Asclepius cult and make their new home famous for its sanatoria.

The island of Kos, which had been colonized originally by the Carians, had sent a contingent as participants in the War of Troy.

The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games.

The Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the seventh or eighth centuries BCE.

With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerge various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, which spread to the shores of the Black Sea, Southern Italy ("Magna Graecia") and Asia Minor.

These states and their colonies reach great levels of prosperity that result in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece, expressed in architecture, drama, science, mathematics and philosophy.

Cleisthenes in 508 BCE institutes the world's first democratic system of government in Athens.

By 500 BCE, the Persian Empire controls the Greek city states in Asia Minor and Macedonia.

Attempts by some of the Greek city-states of Asia Minor to overthrow Persian rule fail, and Persia invades the states of mainland Greece in 492 BCE, but is forced to withdraw after a defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE.

A second invasion by the Persians follows in 480 BCE.

Following decisive Greek victories in 480 and 479 BCE at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale, the Persians are forced to withdraw for a second time, marking their eventual withdrawal from all of their European territories.

Led by Athens and Sparta, the Greek victories in the Greco-Persian Wars are considered a pivotal moment in world history, as the fifty years of peace that follow  are known as the Golden Age of Athens, the seminal period of ancient Greek development that lays many of the foundations of Western civilization.

Hippocrates is credited with being the first person to believe that diseases are caused naturally, not because of superstition and gods.

Hippocrates is credited by the disciples of Pythagoras of allying philosophy and medicine.

He separates the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits.

Indeed there is not a single mention of a mystical illness in the entirety of the Hippocratic Corpus.

However, Hippocrates does work with many convictions that are based on what is today now known to be incorrect anatomy and physiology, such as Humorism.

Historians agree that Hippocrates was born around the year 460 BCE on the Greek island of Kos; other biographical information, however, is likely to be untrue.

Soranus of Ephesus, a seconnd-century Greek physician, will be Hippocrates' first biographer and the source of most personal information about him.

Later biographies are in the Suda of the tenth century, and in the works of John Tzetzes, Aristotle's "Politics", which date from the 4fourth century BCE.

Soranus will write that Hippocrates' father was Heraclides, a physician, and his mother was Praxitela, daughter of Tizane.

The two sons of Hippocrates, Thessalus and Draco, and his son-in-law, Polybus, were his students.

According to Galen, a later physician, Polybus was Hippocrates' true successor, while Thessalus and Draco each had a son named Hippocrates (Hippocrates III and IV).

Soranus said that Hippocrates learned medicine from his father and grandfather (Hippocrates I), and studied other subjects with Democritus and Gorgias.

Hippocrates was probably trained at the asklepieion of Kos, and took lessons from the Thracian physician Herodicus of Selymbria. Plato mentions Hippocrates in two of his dialogues: in Protagoras, Plato describes Hippocrates as "Hippocrates of Kos, the Asclepiad";  while in Phaedrus, Plato suggests that "Hippocrates the Asclepiad" thought that a complete knowledge of the nature of the body was necessary for medicine.

Hippocrates will teach and practice medicine throughout his life, traveling at least as far as Thessaly, Thrace, and the Sea of Marmara.

Several different accounts of his death exist.

He dies, probably in Larissa, at the age of eighty-three, eighty-five, or ninety, though some say he lived to be well over one hundred.

Ancient Greek schools of medicine are split (into the Knidian and Koan) on how to deal with disease.

The Knidian school of medicine focuses on diagnosis.

Medicine at the time of Hippocrates knows almost nothing of human anatomy and physiology because of the Greek taboo forbidding the dissection of humans.

The Knidian school consequently fails to distinguish when one disease caused many possible series of symptoms.

The Hippocratic school or Koan school achieves greater success by applying general diagnoses and passive treatments.

Its focus is on patient care and prognosis, not diagnosis.

It can effectively treat diseases and allows for a great development in clinical practice.

Greek physician Hippocrates makes extensive use of medicinal herbs, including opium.

He dismisses the magical attributes of opium but acknowledges its usefulness as a narcotic and styptic in treating internal diseases, diseases of women and epidemics.

His compilation On Airs, Waters and Places is the first medical climatology.